Other Generations News
Business is booming at Generations for Life with the start of the new school year. The pro-life clubs we helped establish or rejuvenate are up and running again, new clubs are forming, and requests for talks are coming in from teachers and students all over the country. I’m looking forward to this new year working with teens, and taking advantage of all the great experiences of the past summer.
Mostly Work and a Little Play
The last weekend of June I flew out to Myrtle Beach with my parents for The National Life Center conference. The conference, for workers at pregnancy care centers across the nation, was a great mix of wonderful speakers, new and refreshing information on the life issues, and time to enjoy the gift of life (see full story).
Being out on the front lines, I found it inspiring to see all the wonderful things that pregnancy centers do. They are people of deep faith and commitment—and they are loads of fun to be with.
Face the Whole Truth
Annie distributes Face the Truth literature
[Photo by EJS]
During the past few years I have managed to steal away a couple days to be out there with the gory pictures during the League’s annual Face the Truth tours, but this year I participated in the entire two-week tour (see full story). What a difference it makes to do the full tour!
After a while the emotions really take a toll. It’s not easy to be out there with pictures that many people would rather not see. One minute someone yells, “You should be ashamed of yourselves.” The next minute someone is blessing us and telling us to keep up the good work. One young man thanked me for standing up for the unborn and gave me money for lunch! That’s encouragement enough for me!
Tough Start for St. Norbert’s Club
Towards the end of July, Kathleen Fayard came to see me again about the pro-life club she wants to start at St. Norbert’s College in Wisconsin. Last year, the campus ministry office for whom she was working said she could start a club. Then they bogged her down with more “important” work, and insisted that she read an outrageous amount of pro-life literature before she could begin—this despite her experience as president of the pro-life club at Good Counsel High School in Chicago.
Kathleen began to think they were trying to keep her from forming a club! After I talked to her, she decided to start the club without campus ministry’s help, going directly through the school administration. Please pray that the club is able to get off the ground this year.
Red Eye Again
In mid-August, the Red Eye, the Chicago Tribune’s young adult news daily, contacted me again (see April 2003 Action News), this time to be part of a round table discussion group on homosexual marriage. Although there were eleven of us who participated, most of the quotes used in the story were from me, possibly because I offered a clear definition of marriage as a lifelong union between a man and a woman, ordered toward raising a family. Most of the others supported “gay” unions or were clueless.
New Generations Brochure
Our new Generations for Life brochure has just come back from the printers! The brochure explains our mission to help teens make choices that affirm the value and dignity of life, and to activate their youthful altruism and zeal through pro-life clubs. We’ve just begun sending out these brochures to area schools. They’re getting deservedly high praise.
Annie with Rachel Clausen’s teens, on the cover of the new GFL brochure
[Photo by EJS]
Thanks to Rachel Clausen and the wonderful teens of St. Alexander’s in Villa Park, IL, who posed for the great picture on the brochure cover, and thanks also to my brother Eric, the League’s Communications Director, for his work designing the brochure.
GFL Curriculum
The Generations for Life Curriculum is finished too, after nearly a year of hard work. Thanks to all who responded to the League’s appeal back in August to help us pay for getting the curriculum printed. We still need more help to afford the kind of professional printing that will make this curriculum visually appealing and most effective.
The Curriculum is an antidote to the massive and deceptive propaganda campaign of the pro-abortion, sex-education establishment. Remember what Our Lord said: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” Help us cast the lies of the culture of death to the bottom of the sea by contributing to the GFL Curriculum printing fund.
Trip to Indy
My assistant Mary Shine and I headed to Indianapolis September 3 to give a talk on Women and Abortion to a Theology on Tap group of over a hundred young adults, including several from the Indianapolis branch of the Scheidler clan. Our message was very well received. After the talk, a young woman came up to say she had traveled all the way from Purdue University to hear the talk. She said she was so inspired that she wants to be a chastity speaker when she graduates from Purdue!
Beautiful La Crosse
Fr. Sam Martin invited me to La Crosse, WI on September 17 to speak to the entire student body of St. Thomas Aquinas High School. That evening I spoke to a gathering of CCD and youth group teens and their parents. Between the two talks, Peg Manson, an active mother of two St. Thomas students, showed me around town. A trip to La Crosse isn’t complete if you haven’t been to Granddad’s Bluff!
Thanks again for your continued support for Generations for Life through your financial contributions and especially your prayers. We’re making a difference in the lives of young people—a difference that will spread throughout our culture in the years and decades to come.
Links and Related Articles
- Generations Letters—Your comments to Generations for Life
- Teacher Spends Summer with Generations—High school teacher John Jansen was a big help this summer
- Generations for Life News Archive—List of Action News articles on the League’s youth outreach
- Generations for Life Main Page on this site
